Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. With all eyes on Dallas, it seemed fitting to re-run one of our favorite pieces from 2012, an ode to the city and its complicated legacy.

From a Boeing 737 on a sparkling fall day, Dallas looks like a patchwork of mottled greens and browns, the ground more rich and loamy than withered and sere, as if the coming winter were just nature’s way of winking. The lakes are murky, the land billiard-table flat, laced with former wagon trails that have now become thoroughfares. Approaching the city, cloned suburban houses sprout in rows that curl and stretch with predetermined whimsy, the pools, tennis courts, and golf courses popping up at neat intervals. Divided expressways thread through the map, the roads laden with cars, pickups, motorcycles, and semis all going, going, going, even on a Sunday, even on a football Sunday.

I am flying into Love Field, an airport that has served Dallas since 1917, when the army named the flying field after First Lieutenant Moss Lee Love, who crashed and died in his Type C Wright pusher biplane four years earlier. Kennedy landed at Love Field at 11:37 A.M. on November 22, 1963. It is a Texas State Historical Site. I am flying into history.